Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
There is one thing I absolutely can never, ever go on a trip without: something to read. All those hours on planes, trains, cars and bus stations can leave a person with hours of free reading time. Can’t let it go to waste. For my recent trip to Italy, I had a very special list of books I wanted to tackle. And thanks to one delayed train and some bad weather in Amsterdam, I got almost all of them read.
Here are the books solo female travelers MUST read on their next trip:
It Chooses You by Miranda July
This book by female director Miranda July makes me cry every time. It’s so funny and endearing, because it’s so human. It chronicles July’s efforts to buy things from the Penny Saver and learn about the people selling their belongings. It seems odd. It is odd. But it’s so lovely.
Bed: Stories by Tao Lin
Tao Lin is just damn funny. SO DAMN FUNNY. And weird. I like funny and weird. And if you do too, you’ll enjoy this collection of crazy.
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
You’ve probably heard of the movie. But you know what? This book. This book is really where it’s at. If you’ve ever thought about doing something bold after a breakup or death or firing or anything - you need this book.
Alone with Other People by Gabby Bess
I love poems. People that know me well know that I actually wanted to be a poetry major in college, but it’s an art that not many publishers are willing to explore. Bess’s book is one of the few brilliant new collections of poems to be on the scene in the last few years.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
A classic. An important crux of women’s history. It’s amazing how many women my age have never read this seminal text. Read it to see how far we’ve come. Read it gasp at how little progress we’ve made. Read it to understand what we must continue to fight for.
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
This book surprised me because it shouldn’t have been interesting to me: it’s literally about cleaning. Well, not entirely. It’s a series of essays that include cleaning references, but it’s really remarkable because it’s so human.
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
You may know this woman because of Beyonce. You just don’t know it yet. She’s the woman on Flawless who perfectly describes feminism. Yes, now you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, her writing is just as brilliant.
What are the books that make your heart pitter patter with feelings and emotions and woos and tears and bursts of laughter in inappropriate places?
Sometimes you just need your mind blown. It’s that sense of boredom that creeps into your soul and doesn’t quite find relief from a quick run with loud music in your ears or an hour of staring at a few beautiful YouTube videos.
No. This is the feeling like: I need to FEEL SOMETHING IN MY GOD DAMN BELLY AND HEART AND MIND. I NEED TO CONNECT. I NEED TO RESET. I NEED TO FEEL THE FEELS.
That’s what I’m going after. And these books always do it.
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
It would absolutely be fair for me to say that this book changed the whole course of my life. I know, bold statement. The moment it came into my life and the person that gave it to me hold such a sincerely beautiful place in my heart because there has never, ever, before or since, been a book that resonated so deeply. This book chronicles a series of fictional dreams journaled by Albert Einstein. Each entry is a perspective on time, and it’s meaning and relevance if time were to be measured from that perspective. It’s easy to knock out in an afternoon and I promise you’ll routinely find yourself saying: “time COULD be a circle.”
Particularly compelling quote from Einstein’s Dreams: “If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”
I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Reflections on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
There is no shortage of genius in the Nora Ephron catalogue, but this collection of essays is one that I come back to time and time again. Why? Because Nora manages to hit the thing about being a person, specifically a human female person, right in the crosshairs of truth and pain and love and peace and rage and beauty and it sticks with you for weeks.
Particularly compelling quote from I Feel Bad About My Neck: “Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re thirty-four.”
The Boys of My Youth By Jo Ann Beard
I love a 90s throwback in almost all areas of media consumption, but this particular 1999 best seller has stuck with me more than Clueless quotes. It’s especially compelling now in my late 20s, because each essay reminds me of a past love, a lesson learned from a man who I have since said goodbye too. Sometimes you need to be reminded that the deep emotional scars of love, while specifically each our own, are shared amongst so many of us. There’s a very good chance this book will make you cry. You have been warned.
Particularly compelling quote from The Boys of My Youth: “We sit silently in our living room. He watches the mute television screen and I watch him. The planes and ridges of his face are more familiar to me than my own. I understand that he wishes even more than I do that he still loved me.”
Thrift shopping is something of a family tradition. My mom always took us to the local thrift before taking us to the mall at the beginning of each school year - I hated it as a child but now I appreciate it so much. This long-time tradition has made me a pseudo expert on finding awesome stuff at the thrift store. Like, fun fact: did you know that Target donates all its un-purchased clearance to Goodwill?
However, as much as I like a deeply discounted Target find, it’s actually vintage books that I’ve become more recently obsessed with. Most Goodwills sell hardcovers for about $2.99 and most other thrift stores will go even lower than that. And while you may expect to find a million copies of Chicken Soup for some such soul (and indeed, you will likely find at least 100 per store) - you are also likely to find some serious gems if you know how to look.
Those three right there? A 1970s National Geographic book on planetary lifeforms (left), a book on the real lives of Gypsies from the 1980s (center) and a Random House picture book on Astronomy from the 1970s (right). Found all of them in ONE stop. Here’s how I did it:
1. Peel back those dust covers: Oftentimes dust covers are pretty elaborate and focused on trends, because it’s cheaper to print on paper than on the actual book binding. There can be some seriously brilliant stuff behind those covers. There was possibly the ugliest illustration of the sun I have ever seen on the cover of that Astronomy book. That got tossed in the trash heap and its amazing binding is now on display.
2. Look behind the neatly organized rows: The thing about a lot of thrift stores is that they are wickedly disorganized. Don’t fret - this is to your advantage. Books are a popular donation item because they are heavy and take up a lot of space, so what most thrift stores do is they create deep rows of books per shelf. Behind the first row there is usually another row or just a general heap of books. That’s your treasure zone.
3. Don’t be afraid of a stink: Unless you can SEE the damage, whether that be water or dust or dirt, don’t put something down because it has a bit of a smell. My foolproof way for getting rid of a strange smell in books? Putting dryer sheets between the covers and between every 40 to 50 pages. Close it up and leave it be for a few weeks and then remove the dryer sheets. So simple.
4. Make the reference section your friend: A common organizational method at thrift stores and used book stores is: fiction, non-fiction, reference. Why? Because Encyclopedias were a ridiculously common gift pre-internet and now every widow, divorcee and retired librarian is donating those hulking books. However, often times a lot of other great hardcover books that are about that same size get thrown into that mix. It’s because they either don’t seem to have a logical location OR they have a binding that looks suspiciously like a reference book.
5. The children’s book section is full of awesome: Ok, so this is a weird one, but it’s a fact I’ve found to be true over and over again. A lot of illustration books are thrown into the children’s section because: no words = for kids, I guess. At least that has been a consistent theme in my experience. Photo books usually don’t end up here, but if you like illustrated books or compilation books with lots of random artist’s illustrations - then you are likely to find them here.
Good luck finding your new book porn. Before I let you go shopping though, here’s a fact about these books: I actually do buy books I am interested in - not just because they have a rad cover - although it can be tempting. But I also see books as art, which is why I probably will never read every page of these books. Some people may find this wasteful. I think it’s smart. So find something you like, buy it, page through it and then find it a great spot in your home. It’s like any coffee table book - it’s for conversation and appreciation.
